MUSIC AND RADIO ICON MARTIN PERLICH HOOKS UP!
...or, How The Amoeba Buy Counter Made Martin Perlich And Me Life-Changing Friends.

Here at The Choice Bin, I've been a fan of Martin Perlich's ever since I discovered him on the radio in the early 2000s. An immediate hit, I remember making the station a preset on my car radio. He was THE MAN when it came to the best musical programming in L.A. at the time for me and it was every weekday!! Avant Garde, progressive Rock and Pop mixed with gorgeous Classical, World, and Folk music in regular rotation! And his raps between tracks always drew me closer to the speakers. His distinguished broadcasting career spans almost fifty years. He rocked as a producer of ''The Midnight Special''. He pioneered experimental radio in Cleveland (Classical Radio as well as Rock Jock on WMMS in Cleveland) and KMET in Los Angeles (now KTWV); classical host on KFAC, KUSC, and KMZRT. He practically invented the "eclectic" format of mixing genres one after the other, fitting in perfectly in the early 1960's. As a radio guy, I was excited about what he would play next. His interviews with music legends are the stuff of legend, and available here!

So, I was at the buy counter at Amoeba Hollywood one day (where folks trade in their old CDs and records). "I know that voice," I thought, as this cool fellow laid out his used CDs. Of course we chatted, and when fate would put us together for a few more minutes, it was apparent to me that that not only would we be fast friends, but broadcasting was only a part of Martin's life.

Amoeba Music is a proud sponsor of CIIS Public Programs & Performances' event with spoken word artist Andrea Gibson on Friday, October 17th at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco.

Andrea Gibson is not gentle with her truths. It is this raw fearlessness that has led her to the forefront of the spoken word movement -- the first winner of the Women's World Poetry Slam -- Gibson has headlined prestigious performance venues coast to coast with powerful readings on war, class, gender, bullying, white privilege, sexuality, love, and spirituality.

Her work has been featured on the BBC, Air America, C-SPAN, Free Speech TV and in 2010 was read by a state representative in lieu of morning prayer at the Utah State Legislature.

Now, on her fifth full-length album, FLOWER BOY, and her second book, THE MADNESS VASE, Gibson's poems continue to be a rally cry for action and a welcome mat at the door of the heart's most compassionate room.

Today Jack Webb is best remembered for his portrayal of Detective Sergeant Joe Friday on the radio and television series Dragnet. Friday – a stiff, slouching, robotic cop who chain smokes as he rails against drug abuse – embodies for many folks the definition of a hypocrite and a square. However, the real Webb was also quite the hepcat, an amateur jazz musician with a massive collection of records. In addition to playing hard-boiled detectives, he also used radio to attack social injustices (on One out of Seven) and, with Pete Kelly's Blues, indulge his lifelong love of jazz and Chandler-esque noir.

Pete Kelly's Blues lobby card

Pete Kelly's Blues began as an unsponsored replacement series for The Halls of Ivy after a 13 February audition. It debuted on NBC on 4 July, 1951 and aired on Wednesday nights in most markets (Saturdays in others). It was created byRichard L. Breen, who'd previously worked with Webb on the wonderful and not-at-all dissimilar radio noir series, Pat Novak, for Hire, which Webb had left in 1947. Throughout the series' short run, Webb continued to star on both the radio version of Dragnet, which ran from 1949 until 1957, and the television version, which began a few months after Pete Kelly's Blues and continued to air until in its first run until 1959).

Proving once and for all that I have my finger on the pulse of what youth today really want, I’m continuing my list of favorites from the so-called Golden Age of Radio. You older, out-of-touch squares can stop reading now and go listen to punk rock or trip-hop or whatever it is seniors are into these days.

Now that the fogeys are out of the (metaphorical) room, read and listen on...

Let’s consider a comedy, namely, Our Miss Brooks.

Premiering in 1948, Our Miss Brooks was an immediate success, garnering awards and a loyal fan base for its lead actress, Eve Arden.

People don’t speak of Eve Arden as much as her talent warrants. She had fantastic comic timing, capable of evoking laugh-out-loud moments with a single, monosyllabic word.

Our Miss Brooks has flimsy, unimaginative plot-lines, and you’ll never listen to it because you “can’t wait to find out what happens next.” The show is great because the cast is great, and Eve Arden delivers punch-lines with such wry deftness, it’s as if Touchstone from As You Like It has been reincarnated as a public high school teacher.

I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days; what sleep I have gotten is mostly thanks to the fine folks who make Motrin PM. (In the interest of full disclosure you should know that while McNeil Consumer Healthcare – makers of the aforementioned drug – are not a sponsor of the Amoeblog, they do give us free donuts on Mondays and occasionally wash our cars for an extra buck or two.)

While my Mom was kind enough to pass down to me a knack for cooking and robust health, I also inherited her tenuous sleeping habits. We deal with it similarly, too: we listen to the radio to keep our minds from, as she puts it:

“Going, going, going… just making plans and playing with ideas.”

Or, as I put it:

“Obliterating my peace of mind with the chaos and fury of post-traumatic stress fantasies catalyzed by a cruel and crippling world.”

It’s semantics, really.

Mom likes to treat this with AM radio, a favorite program being Coast to Coast. While this particular broadcast seems to promote a nightmarish reality of government conspiracy, alien invasion, body snatching and morally questionable fringe-sciences, she finds it delightful. That she does speaks to her unwavering trust in our fellow man and her willingness to believe everyone deserves to prove their innate goodness – even if, I suppose, it’s lizard-men from another planet who are covertly running our government.